Italian Food Is Messy
by Tobi Tortue
Summary: Suzaku and Lelouch enjoy a night in, cooking Italian food. Of course, the menu happens to be full of noodles, sausages, white sauce, and innuendo. Co-written with SlvrSoleAlchmst1 and anja-chan.


_Author's Note: This work is not solely my own. I wrote the first part, then SlvrSoleAlchmst1 wrote the next, and anja-chan wrote the third. I also wrote the ending, and edited it. Thanks go to anja-chan, for making the following dinner with me all the time, and to SlvrSoleAlchmst1, for taking us out for Italian food the night we wrote this. The theme for this renga-style story was "Italian food" and "Code Geass," and there are three of these stories in total. The others are posted under the other authors' profiles._

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**Italian Food Is Messy**

"It's been a long time since we've had dinner together, hasn't it, Lelouch." Suzaku set the bowl of salad on the table and turned to face his best friend with a wistful smile. "It's too bad we can't do this sort of thing more often."

Lelouch was gazing at him from his place at the stovetop, near the pot of not-to-be-watched, soon-to-be-boiling water. Suzaku had always thought his friend looked ridiculous, not to mention feminine, in the pink, ruffly apron, but knew he could never tell Lelouch. The apron was, after all, a gift from Nunnally.

"Ah," Lelouch said easily, turning back to peek at the water and pull the freshly defrosted Italian sausages from the microwave. "It's _your_ fault, you know," he teased. "You're the one who spends his evenings with the military."

Suzaku turned a guilty look towards the cupboards to his right. "I can't argue with you on that one…."

Lelouch gave a deep-throated laugh and he spun around, holding a sausage in one delicate hand and a wooden spoon in the other. "You can't argue with me on _anything_, Suzaku. Really. Sometimes," he began, pointing the sausage at Suzaku like an accusing finger, "you're really hopele—ah!"

The sausage slipped out of Lelouch's grasp and went flying in a fumbling arc before bouncing on the floor like a dying fish and coming to rest at Suzaku's feet.

"Look who's talking, Lelouch." Suzaku cracked a smile, and then laughed outright. Lelouch shot him a dirty look.

"It was _slippery_," he said haughtily, raising his nose so he could stare down at the impudent sausage.

Suzaku just laughed harder. "Do you want me to wash it off or something?" He reached down to grab the piece of meat. The sausage was slightly firm and had a size that could only be described as awkward. Suzaku stared down at the sausage in his hand with an idea slowly taking shape in his mind. He held the Italian meat up towards Lelouch with a smirk. "Would you still put your mouth on it?" He winked.

Lelouch's face flushed a bright red, his purple eyes locked onto the long, round, hunk of meat in Suzaku's hand. It appeared as if he were trying to turn his eyes away from the sausage but was utterly helpless to do so. "S-su-su_za_ku!" Lelouch stuttered angrily, his ears catching the blush as he held onto the counter for balance.

Suzaku laughed and rose from the floor, heading towards the sink. "The look on your face was _priceless_," he said in place of an explanation. Lelouch still looked like a peacock whose feathers had been inappropriately ruffled. He put the sausage under a steady stream of warm water, and began massaging all the dirt off it, wondering if the joke would be on himself in the end. He shook his head. "What kind of sauce are we using tonight, Lelouch?"

Lelouch sounded relieved that Suzaku had changed the subject away from the meat. "It's a four-cheese and garlic alfredo sauce. If you'd like to try some, it's—"

Suzaku couldn't resist. "White sauce, eh?" he asked, cutting off Lelouch and turning to face him so the other boy could see his skillful hands on the sausage. "How fitting." He gave the sausage a final twist with one hand as Lelouch looked in his direction.

Lelouch turned red to his ear tips again. This was really too… easy. Suzaku held the sausage out to his friend and decided not to joke too much. They were cooking, after all, and he was hungry, and they'd have no time for food if Lelouch was too… flustered… to manage a stovetop. The image of a red Lelouch emitting as much heat as one of the burners was a funny one, and Suzaku sniggered behind the box of noodles he had picked up.

"What are you laughing about?" Lelouch asked, eyeing him disdainfully. The sausage went into the pan now, beginning to sizzle with the rest. Lelouch, on the other hand, seemed to have cooled down. Or perhaps it was Suzaku that was feeling a bit chillier. That glance of Lelouch's had had icicles behind it.

"It was nothing, Lelouch," he replied. "I'm going to put in these noodles now, since the water is already boiling." He moved to the stove and realized that Lelouch had not stopped watching him. "What?"

Lelouch reached up to brush some hair from his face with the back of one wrist. "Putting the noodles in, are you?" he asked nonchalantly.

_Too_ nonchalantly.

It was Suzaku's turn to be suspicious. "Yes. Why?"

"Oh, no reason," came the indifferent response. "But are you sure you don't want to let me do it?" When Suzaku raised his eyebrow in an unspoken question mark, Lelouch continued. "It's just that… those noodles are so very… _hard_. It's going to take quite a bit of skill to… _relieve_ them of that hardness."

Suzaku stared at Lelouch, determined not to let his jaw fall slack. Did Lelouch just…? He blinked and dumped the noodles into the pot at once, defiant. Lelouch only sniffed. "How difficult is it to soften noodles, Lelouch? I'm sure I can work on them until both of us are quite satisfied with the results."

"Well, we'll be able to tell how satisfied we are once we reach the climax of this event," Lelouch said, rolling his sausage around his pan and still speaking lightly. "And don't forget that we have to clean up once we're through."

"Or Sayoko will get mad at us," Suzaku supplied, though he could feel his face threatening to flush. He never should have teased Lelouch about the sausage….

Lelouch turned away from the stove then, facing Suzaku and catching his gaze. "The messiest part to take care of is the white sauce," he delivered blithely. "It being so thick and sticky."

"The trick is to eat it all so that you don't have to worry about it," Suzaku responded, determined not to lose. If this was the game Lelouch wanted to play, then….

"Then you'll make sure to lick every last drop, Suzaku?" Lelouch asked, his eyes still on the sausage. "We wouldn't want any to go to waste."

Fighting back his inhibitions, Suzaku accepted the matter and pushed on. The loser would be whoever got uncomfortable first and he was determined _not_ to be that person. "Of course I would, and with a mouth like mine, I wouldn't miss any of it."

Lelouch froze for a split second, but then resumed as if nothing had happened, using tongs to roll the sausages around the pan. Suzaku grinned in satisfaction. "Those sausages look almost ready to pop, don't they, Lelouch?"

"I'm simply that skillful at handling sausages, Suzaku."

"If you continue like this, they'll probably burst and spill out some juice… you should be careful," Suzaku continued, feeling that he was definitely dominating Lelouch in their battle of innuendo. Which, now that he thought about it, he almost never won mental games against Lelouch….

"Then I'll just have to remedy that, won't I, Suzaku." Lelouch's voice seemed oddly distant, yet it sent a small chill down Suzaku's spine. Before Suzaku could respond, the black-haired boy pulled the sizzling sausage pan off the stove and removed the sausages to a cutting board.

"Here's a quick and easy _fix_, Suzaku," Lelouch continued, his eyes glinting malevolently as he picked up a knife. Suzaku swallowed uncomfortably, feeling his stomach muscles tighten. Lelouch brought the knife down almost painfully quick, neatly slicing one of the sausages in half. Grinning over the meat carving procedure in a fashion Suzaku had only associated with Lloyd, Lelouch spoke again. "You'd better tend to the noodles, Suzaku… see if they'll get softer with your interference."

Not wanting to watch the massacre that made him wince nearly every time Lelouch brought the knife down, Suzaku turned back to the boiling water. The kitchen was silent for a few moments, except for the bubbling pot and the _thunk_ the knife made when it connected with the wooden board.

Suzaku stirred the pasta a little, wondering what his next plan of attack could be after Lelouch had so clearly and casually alluded to castration. Not only that, but now Suzaku was seen as inferior because the noodles were getting _softer_ as he stood there. He looked down into the pot.

"Lelouch? What does it mean if white stuff is coming out of the noodles?"

"What?!" Lelouch gasped. Suzaku grinned at the expression on Lelouch's face as the sausage-mutilator spun recklessly to look at him, the meat forgotten.

"It's just that… I think it's so _hot_… and now the noodles in all that hot water… it's like they're _releasing_ some kind of _pressure_…" Suzaku answered, waving a hand in front of himself to prove that the heat was very intense.

The former prince took a few careful steps to Suzaku's position at the stove, and peered over his shoulder at the pot of noodles and boiling water. Lelouch turned away suddenly, his tone haughty as he moved back to the cutting board. "I'm surprised you don't know what the white stuff is, Suzaku. I thought everyone knew." There was another eerie chopping noise.

Suzaku gritted his teeth as he stirred the noodles. So, Lelouch thought he could one-up him so easily? He tightened his grip on the wooden spoon, and a smirk fell into place.

"Well, never mind about that," Suzaku began smugly. "But I guess there's a reason why _I'm_ the one sliding all these noodles across each other with this _wood_, huh." He looked over his shoulder to give Lelouch a wink as his friend spluttered and missed the piece of sausage he was aiming for.

"Lelouch… it looks like you're having trouble handling that sausage…." He eyed the knife in Lelouch's hand as the other boy's face darkened with a blush and a scowl. "But if you're having trouble controlling it, maybe a little bit of discipline _is_ necessary…. As far as _punishment_ goes, I find that a little bit of _wood_ makes at least _noodles_ more docile." He held up the rounded end of the wooden spoon for a moment, smirking, before sinking it slowly back into the hot water and stirring gently.

"Who says I asked for a docile sausage, Suzaku?" Lelouch queried, his voice as dark as the evening, and much colder.

"Well, this wood over here can make the noodles a bit more lively, too, if that's what you'd like," Suzaku responded, stirring a little faster so the pasta spun around the pot and little droplets of water landed hissing on the burner.

Lelouch looked at the stove. "Knock it off, Suzaku—_you're spilling!"_

"Not yet, I'm not," Suzaku responded in a low voice, and then had to lean back to laugh at the horrified expression on Lelouch's face as his words sunk in.

"I meant the noodles!" Lelouch yelled in frustrated explanation.

Suzaku started laughing so hard he had to step away from the stovetop to keep from falling into the pot of boiling water. He took the wooden spoon with him. "Oh, despite what it may look like, Lelouch, I've only got one piece of wood here," he laughed, gesturing to his pants with the wooden spoon.

Lelouch's eyes blazed. "Suzaku! You know what I meant! And stop waving around your stupid wood!"

Suzaku doubled over with laughter, taking several steps backwards in quick succession to keep from losing his balance. Lelouch started to step towards him with a shout as he knocked into the counter and flipping the cutting board into the air, sending the sausages and their chopped-up brethren flying….

Suzaku jumped forward to catch the falling meat, and managed to grab only one, full sausage. He slid forward, bowling into Lelouch, and both of them fell to the floor as a rain of sausages fell down on them from above with tiny wet slaps on the floor.

There was a moment of stillness. Lelouch was pinned on his back under Suzaku, who was gripping a whole sausage… right above Lelouch's mouth. Suzaku blinked in surprise, and then watched as the storm clouds formed on Lelouch's face.

Lelouch sucked in a deep breath.

"SUZAKU!"

"Sorry." Suzaku shrugged a little. "At least I saved _one_, right?"

"SUZAKU!!"

"Sorry. I'll clean up," Suzaku said.

Lelouch pulled in another deep breath. "SUZA—!"

Suzaku plopped the sausage down, effectively cutting off the noise. Lelouch's purple eyes bulged in shock and he went deadly calm. Suzaku used one hand to lift himself from Lelouch slightly, keeping his other hand firmly on the spicy Italian meat in Lelouch's mouth. He smirked.

"You know, Lelouch, as much as I like to hear you scream my name, I think you're best when your mouth is full."

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_Please review, and don't forget to check out the Code Geass + Italian Food stories posted by SlvrSoleAlchmst1 and anja-chan._


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